1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to disk drive suspensions and, more particularly, to a new design of lifter for the load beam in a disk drive suspension. The lifter is mounted to the load beam rigid portion near the distal end of the load beam. As mounted, the lifter is laterally offset, i.e. offtrack from the load beam centerline, and also vertically offset from the plane of the load beam rigid portion. The invention lifter thus provides a high clearance from the disk for insertion of the camming ramp and a locus of ramp contact with the lifter that is nearer to the disk edge. Moreover, the present lifter is of simple shape readily formed by conventional manufacturing processes.
2. Related Art
A lifter is a part of the suspension mechanism that works with the camming surface of a load ramp to load and unload the slider carried by a flexure-load beam combination from the rotating disk.
In removable disk drives mechanisms are provided to lift the suspensions including a ramp and a cam follower to enable retrieval of the disk (media) without the slider contacting the disk. When the slider is lifted-off the disk, it does not read or write to the disk. Improved disk technology has made disks smoother to avoid stiction problems. Typical lifters used in present drives are hypodermic needle-sized tubes that are glued to the load beam, or attached thereto by crimping tabs or other metal folding structure. These lifters are located either along the centerline of the suspensions or off the centerline of the suspensions. To prevent unwanted read-write activity of the slider, the slider is desirably lifted off the disk as far as possible at the outer diameter of the disk and this is problematical with a centerline-mounted lifter. See FIG. 5 PRIOR ART. A further problem with centerline lifters is the difficulty of lifting the slider by a ramp when the lifter is at the centerline of the long axis of the suspension. There is very little clearance between the disk and the ramp surface. An off-center, or off-track lifter avoids these centerline lifter problems by allowing the suspension to be lifted off relatively closer to the outer diameter of the disk.